Diving into Research
Final Project — Week 1
This week we started the research portion of our design project. Our project prompt is to come up with a design that improves the experience of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-queer people at NYU Langone Health Hospital. After organizing ourselves the previous week, we moved into the research and brainstorming phase of the project. We first heard in class from Service Designer, Max Masure, on creating inclusive spaces. We worked through a user journey of a hypothetical transwoman, and how her experience was in a fictional healthcare setting.
Afterward, our group discussed the next steps for the coming week. Several took on the role of research through studies provided, others started work on a survey to generate feedback, and I reached out to my network of friends within this community to set up some discussions.
A lot of the work I’ve done in activist spaces highlights the diversity of voices and I thought it was paramount to have voices from the community in an open conversation to allow their voices to come through.
In marginalized spaces when seeking changes, a common phrase we repeat is: “nothing about us, without us.”
This communicates succinctly the idea that to be inclusive is not just to have inclusive environments and spaces but to have members of those communities involved with all parts of the process. I reached out to some friends and waited for their response.
As the week progressed, I heard from one friend who was open to answering questions via direct messages on Instagram. Another, who is a pro chef and also passed on good veggie recipes, offered to meet on zoom. I was hoping to connect with a third friend named Juli because she had a wealth of information and a tenacious spirit, but I hadn’t heard anything back. After a few days of coordinating meetings and reviewing the course content, I decided to jump on the team’s Trello and begin organizing it in the way we discussed in class. We broke our Trello down into a series of weeks to keep track of the school work and upcoming expectations. Yao came up with some great tools to utilize for reminders and to extend more of the platform’s abilities.
The next day we all met on Zoom to discuss our progress so far. We reviewed the Trello platform, did some brainstorming of questions to ask in our surveys and for our guests, and discussed some of the already performed research. A key takeaway that we realized early on is that much of the barriers in these environments stem from interpersonal issues but are commonly blamed on institutional ones. As the week went on, I managed to set up some zoom meetings with a few friends but still no word from Juli.
As Monday dawned, I couldn’t help but feel a bit bummed that I wasn’t able to get the team together with anyone before our next class. It felt as if we were already behind without any in-person research to allow for brainstorming and other aspects of the week. I checked my student email to confirm my registration appointment for that afternoon. Buried in my emails I found a message from Juli! I had missed it as it came during the midnight hour on Saturday and work had stolen away my weekend. We quickly arranged an 11 am meeting and I dropped a last-minute message to the team. I logged on and most of the team joined shortly after. Now I’m sure you’re wondering, “what is so special about Juli?”
Juli is a longtime friend of mine and also the Executive Director of Gender Equality New York (GENY). She frequently gives trainings, talks, and workshops on gender-expansive topics, and helps draft legislation to be passed at the state and federal levels. She knows how to explain topics concisely and quickly, without skipping a beat. Once we greeted each other and provided introductions on the call, I briefed Juli on our topic regarding healthcare and he had a PowerPoint already prepared from another day! She walked us through some of the key insights we hadn’t thought about such as gender-expansive employment, inclusive and exclusive cisgender staff behavior, and what in her mind makes a supportive environment.
It was eye-opening to hear her stories of doing annual training at some institutions and they show almost no measurable improvements despite having concrete steps provided. It shows how important this work is and how instituting small changes in the right spots can be incredibly significant.
This week we’re off to sense-making & synthesis, and I’m excited to see what ideas bubble up to the surface with the desire to make a difference.
